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Districts aren’t required to offer early education programs nor are children required to enroll — so the bill isn’t expected to prompt a sudden influx of 3- and 4-year olds into the pre-K system. Proponents say providing early education opportunities will help young Vermonters better prepare for school at a period in their lives when their brains are absorbing information at an astonishing rate.

Rep. Sarah Buxton, D-Tunbridge, a co-sponsor of the bill, says the legislation won’t “be life-changing for every 3- and 4-year-old in the state, but there are certainly communities where it’s going to make a real difference.”

Under the legislation, school districts that don’t offer public programs must pay a statewide tuition rate for children to attend at least 10 hours of pre-K per week in any prequalified program. The hope is that by establishing a uniform tuition rate and by creating consistent criteria for approving programs, the law would allow more children to participate in pre-K.

Rep. Johannah Donovan, D-Burlington, the chair of the House Education Committee, said a primary purpose of the legislation is to afford greater access to pre-K for low-income families living in affluent towns. According to Donovan, many of the roughly 40 towns that don’t offer public pre-K programs have a critical mass of wealthy families who enroll their children in private programs.

“Eighty plus percent of school districts are doing this because of the research and the efficacy of it, so to have communities like Colchester, Rutland, Stowe, and Woodstock not do this represents, to me a huge inequity,” Donovan said.

In his budget address, Shumlin pledged to help cover the start-up costs for new pre-K programs.

The proposed legislation doesn’t directly set aside funds for those costs; instead it alters the way students are counted. The state reimburses schools for average daily membership, or on per-pupil basis. (The proposed rate for next year is $9,151 for each student.) The proposed change in the per pupil count would reduce the upfront costs for starting a program.

The bill won’t be a panacea, however, according to Buxton, who serves on the House Education Committee. The 10-hour minimum, she says, is just a start, and some parents will still have trouble securing spots in pre-K programs, depending on the convenience of the location.

Manuela Fonseca, the early education coordinator for the Agency of Education, said the agency “overwhelmingly supports” expanding pre-K access, but it would like the minimum number of hours to be higher. Fonseca also said that by requiring districts to send tuition money directly to programs, the bill fails to take into account some current arrangements in which school districts support pre-K programs for children in their precinct, but not necessarily in the form of direct monetary compensation. Some districts, Fonseca explained, supply an accredited teacher to the program rather than individual tuition payments.

The bill itself doesn’t have many detractors, but supporters agree that it could lose momentum when the matter of funding comes to the fore. That’s because the state budget has been squeezed by slow tax revenue growth as the economy limps out of the Great Recession.

The House Committee on Education homed in on the bill’s price tag on Friday. The Joint Fiscal Office and the Agency of Education estimate that the total cost will be just shy of $10 million, and the increase would occur incrementally over the course of five years.

Budget estimators expect the bill to increase pre-K enrollment by 24 percent. Total enrollment would top out at about 60 percent in 2020. This estimate assumes enrollment will increase at a rate of 6 percent per year and spur a quarter of a cent increase in the statewide property tax for each of the next five years, beginning in fiscal year 2015.

That number isn’t set in stone — the state doesn’t actually know how many 3- and 4-year-olds reside in the state so estimators used a surrogate count of kindergartners and first-graders that doesn’t take into account future fluctuations in the pre-K population.

Donovan said she thinks the dollar amount may actually be less than predicted for two reasons — she doesn’t expect enrollment to climb so rapidly, and since Vermont’s population is on the decline, she expects the overall number of 3- and 4-year-olds to wane.

Buxton said she was bracing for an even higher figure so she was encouraged to hear the JFO’s estimate. “It was such a miniscule amount,” Buxton said. “This is really not going to have a strong financial impact on the Education Fund.”

“Nonetheless,” she added, “I don’t think it’s possible to leave this building on any given day without giving consideration to the pressures on the Education Fund. We are living in a climate where we are hypersensitive to any type of pressure. I think the fate of this bill has to do with our courage to take steps to make an investment that will benefit our workforce in 25 years.”

Comments

rosemarie jackowski:

February 24, 2013 at 3:38 pm

The idea that parents are inferior when it comes to teaching children is illogical. It is one more attack on families. Many parents are capable of teaching their children, not only in the early years but also through high school and beyond.

The studies showing improved achievement from Pre-K are inconsistent. Many studies show that any ‘gain’ from early childhood ‘institutionalized’ education is lost by the time the child reaches the 3rd grade.

If early childhood education is important, and we all agree that it is – why not allow it to take place in the home. Teachers unions often bring up the issue of class-size. One-to-one teaching could take place in the home.

A child is only 4 years old once. Maybe it is best to allow him to spend that time with the ones who love him the most – usually his parents. Parents who must work outside the home for economic reasons could be given the money that would otherwise go to promote ‘government’ run schools. Do teachers unions object to this – is it really about the kids?

If property taxes go up any more, we will have to find ways to cut back costs. This Pre-K idea is very bad for kids and a lot of Vermonters.

(I had my first year of teaching in 1957 and was a union member of the NEA and NJEA.)

Pre school for three year olds , Please ! Just one more attempt by the state government to mushroom thier size and tax base revenues ! If you need a babysitter , call me , otherwise take care of your own babies ! Let kids be kids for Gods sake ! Many of Shumlins plans are just more fat for government!

Is there any thought given under the Golden Dome to take steps lower property taxes? The trend in Vermont is less students = more spending. Calling pre-K “education” is so it can be paid for through property taxes. What’s next? All day care paid for through property taxes? Offer all Vermont students 4 years of college free and pay for it with property taxes? Many school districts have done nothing to curb the increase in costs and the legislature still wants to grow the pie.

There is research proof the intended gains from programs such as the long-lived Head Start Program do not deliver as intended.

Quote from the federal Administration of Children and Families, Office Of Planning Research and Evaluation, Report of the Third Grade Follow-up to the Head Start Impact Study (Dec 21, 2012, page xviii).

“In summary, there were initial positive impacts from having access to Head Start, but by the end of 3rd grade there were very few impacts found for either cohort in any of the four domains of cognitive, social-emotional, health and parenting practices. The few impacts that were found did not show a clear pattern of favorable or unfavorable impacts for children.”

Tony Lolli vastly oversimplifies the HHS study he cites and unlike the study itself, ignores the plethora of other studies coming to quite different conclusions.

First, unlike Lolli, the study is aware that while the overall cohort might show little improvement, specific subgroups DID show improvement:

“In addition to looking at Head Start’s average impact across the diverse set of
children and families who participate in the program, this study also examined
how impacts varied among different types of participants. There is evidence
that for some outcomes, Head Start had a differential impact for some subgroups
of children over others. …

“At the end of 3rd grade, the most striking subgroup finding was related to children from high risk households. For this subgroup, children in the 3-year old cohort demonstrated
sustained cognitive impacts across all the years from pre-K through 3rd grade. At the
end of 3rd grade, the Head Start children from high risk households showed favorable impacts on the ECLS-K Reading Assessment, the WJIII Letter-Word Identification, and the teacher-reported reading/language arts skills. This was in contrast to the impacts for children in lower and moderate risk households, for whom there were no impacts. Those children who started out with more familial stressors than their peers were found to have multiple positive impacts on the direct student assessments over time. Also among the 3-year-old cohort, children of parents with no reported depressive symptoms experienced
sustained benefits of Head Start in the cognitive[150] domain through the end of 3rd grade and in the social-emotional and parenting practices domain through the end of 1st grade.

“Among the 4-year-olds, the subgroups that demonstrated sustained benefits were children of parents who reported mild depressive symptoms, severe depressive symptoms, and Black children. Head Start children of parents reporting mild depressive symptoms demonstrated favorable cognitive impacts through the end of 3rd grade. This is
in contrast to those whose parents reported, no, moderate, or severe depressive symptoms.” (pp. 149-150)

In addition, success in 3rd grade is NOT the goal of Head Start; it is simply the end point of this particular study. The study itself notes:

“The lasting effects of Head Start and early childhood education in general on children’s outcomes have been the focus of much study. Considering only outcomes through early elementary school and middle childhood, results for the HSIS cognitive outcomes are in line with other experimental and non-experimental early education studies.” (p. 151)

The authors then continue:

“However, as we discuss later, some studies, including those that did not show differences in elementary school, reported finding positive effects later in adulthood.
Although the underlying cause of the rapid attenuation of early impacts is an area of frequent speculation, we don’t have a good understanding of this observed pattern.” (p. 151)

Finally, they note:

“We do not yet know if there will be positive outcomes for HSIS participants later in life, however, research suggests that positive outcomes later in life are possible. Despite a
growing body of research about relatively rapid dissipation of early cognitive impacts, there is some evidence suggesting that positive effects of Head Start may have an impact on participants’ later life such as later school success and early adulthood outcomes (Garces, et al., 2002; Ludwig & Miller, 2007; Deming, 2009). Garces, Thomas, and Currie (2000) conducted a non-experimental study that reported evidence of long-term improvement for Head Start participants on outcomes such as school attainment, earnings, and crime reduction, for some race and gender combinations. Ludwig and Miller (2007), using a regression discontinuity design, reported that increases in Head Start funding were associated with a decline in mortality rates for children [152] We
do not yet know if there will be positive outcomes for HSIS participants later
in life, however, research suggests that positive outcomes later in life are possible.
Despite a growing body of research about relatively rapid dissipation of early
cognitive impacts, there is some evidence suggesting that positive effects of
Head Start may have an impact on participants’ later life such as later school
success and early adulthood outcomes (Garces, et al., 2002; Ludwig & Miller, 2007; Deming, 2009). Garces, Thomas, and Currie (2000) conducted a non-experimental study that reported evidence of long-term improvement for Head Start participants on outcomes such as school attainment, earnings, and crime reduction, for some race and gender combinations. Ludwig and Miller (2007), using a regression discontinuity design, reported that increases in Head Start funding were associated with a decline in mortality rates for children.”

I should add two other points. First, Head Start is not synonymous with “preschool.” Some of the differences in all these studies, to the extent there are any, may relate to
that difference. Second, the study itself notes: “While on average, access to Head Start resulted in more positive experiences for children, not all children in the Head Start group had the same quality of experience. The majority (70 percent) of Head Start children in both cohorts were in centers with overall average ECERS-R scores of at least a five
on a seven-point scale, indicating a good or better environment.” (p. 146) and “Thus, the nature and quality of the experience varied—for some children it was very good, while for other children it was less so. Both the average high quality and the variation may be important in understanding impacts on child and family outcomes.” (p. 147)

I have no expertise in pre-school education and therefore no opinion on the underlying question. But I find it rather appalling to see studies being misused and thrown about as this one has been here and elsewhere.

When our kids were that age I was working as a housekeeper at our local hospital cleaning doctors offices. We sent our kids to a local cooperative pre-school because we felt that it was a good thing so we made it a priority and figured out how to afford it on our low income. Other people can figure it out too. The State should not be in the business of taking care of everything for everybody, and we can’t afford it!

Argh, don’t you just hate it when people are ill-informed or just plain wrong on the internet? I could be up all night arguing with many of you people.

We’re spending $1.5B on education in Vermont — and spending is up significantly despite declining enrollment – (20% decrease in students, with 15% increase in spending — or the other way around, but does it matter??)

We’re talking about a bill that is $1.4m, which could help to leverage greater accountability from the $23m already being spent. Evaluation and monitoring is part of this bill – which is needed.

You people gripe over the tiniest sums, while enormous pots of money are being spent. This bill will bring pre-k to Rutland, where their special ed spending has increased dramatically and literacy/numeracy proficiency is declining. Why not decry school spending that doesn’t help bring about real results for actual children?

Where pre-k is clearly shown to have a lasting effect is with children from low income families. The two elementary schools in Rutland have twice the state average for free and reduced lunch — an indicator of poverty. If we can ensure that children from low income families get what they need to do well in school, before they enter school, we will stop wasting money trying to eliminate the achievement gap later.

And this bill has nothing to do with mother/fathers or families somehow being disrespected. The state is not trying to raise people’s children for them. Public pre-k is for a mere 10 hours a week, and simply helps young kids and struggling families.

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